


hello, i'm a monster too -

by Ariasune



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, abusive dynamics, selfharm, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 22:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1834183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/pseuds/Ariasune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not stockholm syndrome, thank you very much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello, i'm a monster too -

[ ](http://amarcia.tumblr.com/post/128134078666/ive-once-read-a-thing-and-it-was-so-good-and-my)

_credit to[amarcia](http://amarcia.tumblr.com)_

* * *

He supposes he's grown mad, like he had any more say in this matter than in any other. He is a broken thing, he decides, and likes the sound of it, because it is a definition, it is an explanation, it is some formula by which he can understand himself. He is a ruined, wrecked thing that cannot hold water worth a damn, a misused and maybe even well-loved toy. He is a favourite, smashed to odd pieces.

* * *

 He said, "Hello, I'm a monster too."  
"What poisons me is what poisons you."  
Into these animals we grew  
But when we were young, our eyes were blue

* * *

 The voice at the back of his head is an ugly, angry and delighted thing. It reminds him of a cat – smug, and lean, and well-fed – but still a killer wrapped in silk. However, Bakura goes from content and lazy to vicious and playful in the space of days, and Ryou turns with him from reluctant owner to a ball of thread.

And he unravels, and Bakura unpicks him with each popped seam.

Ryou becomes shaky, like if he trembles enough he can vanish into the metal. Sometimes he’s rebellious, determined, putting the cat out with the water. More often these days, he’s shy and drained and left cut up and repurposed on the floor of his mind.

He becomes nervous. Keeps Bakura well-fed and sated, and Bakura still licks at bloody fingernails.

“Why?” Ryou asks, and flinches when Bakura traces him – soul to heart to sternum to – scratches idly at their own skin.

“Why what?” Bakura sounds curious, and lazy, rather than defensive and sharp. The nails against Ryou’s chest are only a little biting. Bakura’s mind presses against his own, but doesn’t try to choke him out with its weight.

“Nothing-” And Bakura is a flash of pain in Ryou’s sizzling nerves.

“Liar,” Bakura laughs then, and the sound has Ryou pressed back against the line between preferring he were dead and being willing to fight Bakura on this.

* * *

 I take my medicine on my knees  
Twice a day but lately three  
Keeps the devil from my door  
And it makes me rich and it makes me poor

* * *

Ryou’s body calls to him sometimes, and murmurs at him sadly – and when he wakes, he fills it up like water. He leaks at the seams (the silvery scar on his hand, neat burns on his sternum, a delicate trail of healed skin around his collarbone and hips). He puddles out into his kitchen, and drinks coffee.

“Have to get him his coffee,” Ryou comments to himself.

He doesn’t even like coffee.

It’s not like Bakura needs placating – there is an unashamed emptiness where the jeering spirit once stood – and Ryou should be loud. Should fill his body up without pouring out the holes in his skin.

He’s watery, and he’s thin, and he is fighting at a beast that isn’t even there. He gentles Bakura like a habit. Stays quiet and soft. Panics now and then. He is playing abused housewife to an absent threat.

He throws up that morning, and the next.

Obediently murmurs good night to an exorcised wound.

He doesn’t know how to stop struggling against Bakura, and in Bakura’s absence picks at his own skin, empties out in a wet, nauseated mess, and his fingernails are never as sharp. Still, they’ll do.

* * *

I think I've come a long, long way  
To stand before you here today  
They're yours alone, the words I say,  
To take with you or throw away

* * *

His friends are worried – Ryou doesn’t have many friends, too many people pick up on those pauses in his thoughts. The missing places. He thinks Yuugi understands it well enough, but where Yuugi _misses_ , Ryou is empty. A house left empty. A drink that has been swallowed down.

He is a prisoner released, and every second is a job application asking if he’s been convicted of something. Of housing evil and sadism and not fighting it.

“I’m really sorry,” Ryou tells Yuugi with the air of a drowning man clinging to another in the rising water. It is an apology that will duck Yuugi under before allowing Ryou to go down.

“Why?”

Yuugi can ask that easily, the word soft on his tongue and in his mouth. Ryou ends up puking into the bushes for his troubles.

He’s pretty sorry for not facing off against the bad guys without dragging everybody else through hell with him. He’s pretty sorry they’ve spoken to Bakura. He’s pretty sorry for himself.

Yuugi gives his back a rub, and gets him home as easily as Yuugi is apparently managing everything else, but, “It’s okay to miss him.”

“He tortured me,” Ryou says, laughing but the mirth must die in his throat because he sounds cold and sharp, “Why the hell would I miss that?”

Yuugi shrugs.

* * *

I'm a beggar in the morning,  
I'm a king at night,  
My belt is loose, and  
My trigger is tight

* * *

 Ryou wakes up, and throws up, and drains out- he drinks coffee, “He’s got to have his coffee,” and goes to sleep at night, still begging Bakura to not have them somewhere blood-soaked and cold in a few hours.

Bakura usually promised maybe, and gods knew he kept that promise.

Ryou tests the weight of the coffee mug, before smashing it very neatly over the unscarred hand. He burns himself, and slices his skin and, “That was his favourite mug, he’s gonna’ kill me,” and everything feels-

-Well maybe not alright, but he’s shattered china, broken glass at his feet. He feels broken open, extricated, like his entire spine has been pulled out and chewed up in Bakura’s sharp mouth.

He feels open and exposed and raw, and it feels so normal, he _laughs_.


End file.
